I’m really excited about tonight’s Pink Slip Party at the Centre Club in Tampa. Jeff Stanislaw and Cara Christopherson from TheBayConnection are promoting this event all over town, and it is sure to be a winner. The event starts at 6:30 p.m. and concludes at 9, and offers a great opportunity for job seekers and area companies to mix and mingle. I’ll be giving a short presentation on personal branding that’s specifically tailored to helping professionals position themselves well for both contract work and full time engagements. A copy of the presentation is available here.

Laura and I attended the 2010 Media Roundtable presented by the Tampa chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and the Florida Public Relations Association yesterday. This is the second year that we have attended, and I must say I felt that the insight I walked away with this year was even more valuable than last. Editors, anchors and reporters from local media outlets such as Fox 13 News, Bay News 9, Channel 10’s 10 Connects, St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune were in attendance.
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We have read and heard countless times that one of the biggest turnoffs for Boomers is when Web sites, emails and marketing materials use tiny font. If you want to reach Boomers, and trust us you do, marketers and designers need to increase the font size. Even brands that skew older are guilty of using too small of a font size. When asked how to improve a Web site, the number one response is almost always “bigger font.”

Now there is someone who wants to do something about this small font epidemic. Chad White, a research director at a digital marketing services agency has created the Boomer Legibility Initiative for a New Decade (BLIND), which seeks to convince marketers to increase the size of their fonts by one point this year, in 2015, and again in 2020.

Other eligibility issues include reverse type, low contrast text, text over background images and full caps. Read more on the importance of legibility here.

I recently downloaded the Lyris Inc. white paper, “Email Goes Mobile: The email marketer’s definitive guide to mobile marketing,” offered free from Mobile Marketer. The topics that I found most interesting in the paper were “integrating mobile marketing into other campaigns” and “best practices for mobile marketing.” According to the paper, “Mobile gives your company an opportunity to gather valuable demographic and psychographic information about your target audience that can be leveraged across other media to create enhanced relevance.” Here are some examples of how this can be done:

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One of our clients, the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, held one of its Tech Trends events last night. This one focused on mobile technology. TBTF put together a strong panel of tech experts and professionals to share advice, tips and lessons learned on implementing mobile technology into your business strategy.

Panelists included:
- Jim Buckley, New Media Business Owner, Cox Target Media/Valpak
- Ed Deutscher, Director of Technology, HSN.com
- Sumit Deshpande, AVP-Product Development Group Manager, BB&T
- Trey Lauderdale, VP of Innovation, Voalte
- Joy Randels, Executive VP of Sales and Marketing, Velocitude
- Moderator: Chris Whiteley, Director of Business Development, xG Technology

The event started out with each of the panelists briefly introducing themselves, their companies and how they have implemented mobile technology into their business strategy. The floor was then open for audience questions.

Key Takeaways and Tips the panel provided:

• Build mobile device and strategies around core business.
• It’s possible to integrate all your mobile activities, so say when you update the mobile site, the applications automatically update.
• There’s a lot of talent out there for iPhone developers, but it is difficult to find blackberry developers.
• HSN noted that iPad traffic has already surpassed Android traffic. They will be developing an iPad app in the very near future.
• How is the iPad going to change development of apps due to the larger screen?
  o HSN – video heavy, perfect for catalogs, able to flip through pages, choose items, make purchases
  o Valpak – a total game changer for advertisers
  o Velocitude – agreed video will be huge
  o Voalte – said not to treat it like a big iPhone, it is a totally different user experience
• What is the ROI?
  o Velocitude – it is different for everyone. Some use it for branding; some use it to drive sales. One example she gave was a retail client that saw 7 million purchases in a month. The analytics offered makes it easy to measure.
  o BB&T – is isn’t about what we get, but about what we’d lose if we didn’t have mobile banking. It isn’t just the younger generations using it, but found that baby boomers and even a big group of seniors are using it.
  o HSN – said it is a case of If I don’t use this, I am falling behind. You can start smalle. Invest a little and measure as you go and then add on.
• Misperception about mobile: that it isn’t secure, but in fact it is more secure than online
• Mobile Web site v. mobile application? It depends on what your aim is; a mobile Web site offers more reach, but specific features can be better on an app.